Remembering why everyone needs to get out and vote

Dear Mother, I remember that you were not very politically minded, but you were crying the day that Franklin D. Roosevelt died in 1945. You were not formally religious, but you certainly believed in the Golden Rule. During the Great Depression in the 1930s, you always sent useful gifts to your siblings who were picking fruit in Oregon (and whose children all attended college in the 1950s).

Your ancestors and mine were immigrants about three generations back and being Irish, often were not treated very well. Yet they all managed to live valuable lives. You were a working woman from the age of 16 forward, living well into your 90s. You were a wife and a mother and a good friend to many other women.

Mom, you would be appalled at what is happening to our country right now. We have a president of our United States, whose name is Donald Trump, and he is as far from being like your beloved Roosevelt as it is possible to be. It would take me pages and pages to tell you all of the things you would not like. When we get a Democrat back into the White House, it will take the occupant and a successor decades to undo the damage Trump and the rest of the Republicans already have done. And at this point, they have been in control 18 months.

What is so disheartening is that 30 percent to 40 percent of the population thinks what is happening is either OK or good. These are mostly people who are on the verge of losing their health care, Social Security, jobs, clean drinking water, clean air and certainly the Golden Rule that asks us to do unto others as we would have others do unto us.

Mother, I am so grateful that I lived with you and Dad (a soldier in World War I) during a time when no one needed to lock the doors of their home, children could safely play together in the front yards, people looked after one another during the hard times and most of the years, there were good jobs and good health care. We got Social Security for our old age and Medicare to help us through the elder years. We had respect for most of our presidents and other government workers. They deserved it.

Remember when our garage was a polling place and every single neighbor was eager to vote? Well today, a lot of people don’t vote, even though tens of thousands of Americans died to give them that right. I’m going to try to help by registering voters again and writing letters in our local newspaper to encourage participation. I know you would have wanted to help get out the vote if you had been here to see how badly this country needs to elect Democrats to government. Some people are as hard to reach as it is for me to reach you now, but we need to try, because every vote counts. Love, Your daughter, Lou Finley